ALBANY — A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced Joseph Felix Strevell, a former New York deputy secretary of state previously convicted of financial crimes and lying to federal authorities, to two and a half years in prison for what U.S. District Judge Thomas J. McAvoy called Strevell's "continued disregard for the law and court orders."

Strevell's 30-month sentence was extraordinary because he received more time in prison than was called for under sentencing guidelines.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Coffman requested Strevell receive additional prison time because of what the prosecution characterized as his egregious pattern of lies, fraud and criminal activity that just last year included selling a young woman a vehicle with no brakes at a time when he had been ordered not to sell cars.

During the sale, he allegedly posed as a former FBI agent and identified himself as a helicopter pilot who responded to the 9/11 terror attacks.

Coffman acknowledged to the judge that it was extremely rare for the U.S. Attorney's office to request a sentence stiffer than what is required by the guidelines.

"This is the rare case," Coffman told McAvoy.

Strevell apologized to the judge for his crimes and said that being in jail for the past seven months had taught him a lesson. He pleaded with the judge to free him so that he could go back to work in order to pay restitution for his earlier law-breaking.

In March, Strevell was sent to jail after a U.S. magistrate judge revoked his prior release after he was charged with driving without a license and failed to report the incident to a federal probation officer.

Strevell pleaded guilty in November 2016 to felony charges, admitting that he concealed his financial assets for years to avoid paying restitution for a 2007 conviction involving abuse of his government duties.

He was released pending his sentencing, but with orders from a judge that he stay out of trouble. In February, authorities said, Strevell was stopped on Interstate 890 in Rotterdam and ticketed by State Police for driving without a license. He did not report his contact with the police to a federal probation officer, which violated the terms of his release.

Strevell was indicted in the spring of 2016 on charges of hiding income in multiple bank accounts, including his daughter's, to avoid paying more than $111,000 he admitted stealing from the Institute for Entrepreneurship, a former state-sponsored nonprofit agency. Strevell pleaded guilty just before his trial was to begin last fall in Albany.

In a brief filed last year, prosecutors said Strevell "intentionally and repeatedly deceived U.S. Probation Officers and the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office about his earnings, assets, expenditures, and sources of funds." They said Strevell also lied under oath about his assets in a deposition two years ago.

The government's brief accused Strevell of systematically concealing income that he and his brother, Chauncey, received from running a Rensselaer used-car dealership, Joe's Garage, that has since closed. The Strevell brothers and their companies were paid roughly $7.6 million from a North Carolina auto dealership that purchased more than 800 cars from the pair between July 2012 and May 2014, prosecutors said. The brothers resold cars they bought at auctions to the southern company, and the funds were wired into the bank accounts of two companies they controlled, Berkshire Properties and Burkshire Properties.

The federal investigation of Strevell's assets began three years ago after the Times Union published a story about his residency and interest in a Rensselaer County horse farm. At the time, Strevell took steps to hide his residency at the property, where he lived with his daughter. When confronted by federal authorities, Strevell allegedly lied about where he got $75,000 that he used as a down payment for the lease-purchase agreement on the $865,000 farm.

The Rensselaer County farm was donated to Cornell University in 2011 as a gift from Joseph and Jeanette Czapluk. Cornell University previously declined comment on its real estate dealings with Strevell.

Strevell had once been a politically connected barber and low-level Senate worker who rose through the ranks to be appointed deputy secretary of state for New York from 1997 to 1999. His political connections then helped him land a $263,000-a-year job as head of the Institute for Entrepreneurship, which was plagued by scandal during Strevell's tenure.

A federal criminal investigation showed Strevell fleeced the institute, which was intended to be a small-business incubator for the State University system. Federal prosecutors at the time of his conviction said the losses from Strevell's misdeeds, including questionable jobs for his friends and relatives, topped $200,000.

Strevell was charged with using the institute's money to buy items for his farm and trips for him and his family. He also arranged for the institute to buy a recreational motor home without disclosing that it was his. He also gave himself a $95,000 raise that had never been authorized.

Chauncey Strevell was paid $70,000 a year as chief operating officer of the institute his brother headed from 1998 to 2001, when both left amid multiple investigations. The organization was later shut down.

For years following his 2009 sentencing, when Strevell was sentenced to home confinement and ordered to pay restitution, he made sporadic and often minimal monthly payments for the court-ordered restitution, records show.